Prosecutor Is Indicted Over Inquiry Into 2016 Police Killing

ALBANY — The New York State attorney general, Eric T. Schneiderman, announced the indictment on Friday of a county district attorney over his handling of a grand jury investigation into the fatal police shooting of an unarmed motorist last year.

Joel Abelove, the district attorney in Rensselaer County, was charged with a single felony count of perjury in the first degree and two counts of official misconduct, a class A misdemeanor.

The charges — a rare instance of a county prosecutor being charged by the state attorney general — stem from the death of a 37-year-old black man, Edson Thevenin, who was shot and killed by the police during a traffic stop in Troy, N.Y. on April 17, 2016.

The case against Mr. Abelove, a Republican, does not focus specifically on the circumstances of Mr. Thevenin’s death, who was shot after an altercation with Troy police after a brief chase involving a traffic stop on suspicion of drunken driving. The chase ended with a Troy police sergeant, Randall French, shooting Mr. Thevenin eight times, killing him, after the officer was pinned between his cruiser and Mr. Thevenin’s vehicle.

Shortly after the shooting, and in line with a 2015 executive order signed by Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, Mr. Schneiderman, a Democrat, sent his Special Investigations and Prosecutions Unit to look into Mr. Thevenin’s death.

Mr. Cuomo, also a Democrat, had granted the state attorney general the power to investigate police-related shootings of unarmed civilians, coming amid a national wave of concern about police methods.

Rather than cooperating with state investigators, Mr. Abelove is alleged to have “quickly and surreptitiously presented the case to a grand jury,” according to Mr. Schneiderman’s office. Mr. Abelove then is accused of having withheld evidence leading to "the inevitable and intended result that no charges were brought.”

The district attorney also took the “extraordinary step of conferring immunity” upon Sergeant French before the grand jury voted, Mr. Schneiderman’s office said, effectively protecting the sergeant from any potential future prosecution in the killing. Finally, in October, Mr. Abelove lied about another immunity case in testimony to a separate grand jury, according to the indictment filed in Rensselaer County Supreme Court.

“As we allege, District Attorney Abelove’s actions violated the law and undermined a criminal investigation,” Mr. Schneiderman said in a statement. “The governor’s executive order was designed to restore public confidence in our criminal justice system, yet the actions we detail today only served to further erode that confidence.”

William J. Dreyer, a lawyer for Mr. Abelove, had no comment.

A spokesman for Mr. Cuomo, Richard Azzopardi, said the governor’s own legal team would also be examining the case and precedent “in order to determine potential next steps,” which could include Mr. Abelove’s removal from office.

“The integrity of the district attorney’s office is paramount,” Mr. Azzopardi said, “and the allegations laid out here are disturbing.”

Since the governor signed his executive order in 2015, Mr. Schneiderman’s office has begun 13 investigations into police-related killings of unarmed civilians; six of those cases have been closed without action, and six remain open, including one on Sergeant French.

One police officer was charged: Wayne Isaacs, of the New York Police Department, who faced trial in the off-duty, 2016 shooting death of Delrawn Small in Brooklyn. In November, Mr. Issacs was acquitted of murder and manslaughter charges.

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A17 of the New York edition with the headline: Upstate Prosecutor Is Indicted Over Investigation Into ’16 Police Killing. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe